Extensible Stylesheet Language

In computing, the term Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is used to refer to a family of languages used to transform and render XML documents.

Historically, the XSL Working Group in W3C produced a draft specification under the name XSL, which eventually split into three parts:

As a result, the term XSL is now used with a number of different meanings:

This article is concerned with the various usages of the term XSL: for details of the various languages embraced by the term, see the relevant article.

XSL began as an attempt to bring the functionality of DSSSL, particularly in the area of print and high-end typesetting, to XML.

In response to a submission from Arbortext, Inso, and Microsoft, a W3C working group on XSL started operating in December 1997, with Sharon Adler and Steve Zilles as co-chairs, with James Clark acting as editor (and unofficially as chief designer), and Chris Lilley as the W3C staff contact. The group released a first public Working Draft on 18 August 1998. XSLT and XPath became W3C Recommendations on 16 November 1999 and XSL-FO reached Recommendation status on 15 October 2001.

XSL Transformations (XSLT) currently^[update] has many implementations available. Several web browsers, including Internet Explorer (using the MSXML engine), Opera (native engine) and Safari, all support transformation of XML to HTML (or other languages) through XSLT. Other notable implementations include Saxon and Xalan.

...
Wikipedia